How Indexing Works

Index problem

Google Webmaster Homepage

I was checking out my website to see what Google was indexing and had a research tool return that I had only one indexed page in Google. I was really surprised so I went to the browser and typed in site:www,affiliatestartingline.com. Sure enough, the only return was one indexed page.

I really got worried and tried to figure out what was going on. Then I remembered I sometimes use my domain without the prefix www. So I tried the same command without the prefix site:affiliatestartingline.com. And boom, there were all the indexed results.

Lesson learned is this. Google sees your prefixed domain and your un-prefixed domain as two separate domains. So you might find yourself with indexing one or the other or a mix of both. You don’t want that.

Index Solution

The solution is found in Google’s Webmaster tool.

You need to have a Google account and then you need to sign up in the Google Webmaster area. Register both your prefixed and unprefixed domains.

In my case I had already signed up the prefixed domain in the Webmaster tool for my account so I added the unprefixed domain.

Once you have registered your accounts, click on one of your domain names to go to the Webmaster tool dashboard for that account.

On the sidebar on the left select the Site Configuration tab. Scroll down and select Settings.

This will take you to a screen with the preferred domain function ready for your use. Select a domain as your preferred domain.

When you do that, Google will index all pages to that preferred domain regardless of whether the prefixed or unprefixed domain is used.

Redirect Your Domain

There is one last step Google wants you to take. Go to your Web host, go to the domains panel in your cPanel and select the Redirect icon. This takes you to the input screen where you will select the domain that is not preferred and redirect it to the preferred domain.

Complete that step and you are done.

Now all your indexing will be directed to one domain and your data will truly reflect the latest status of your site.

If you want to see this in a video, check out my video on Preferred Domain set up, that should make it easy for you to take the steps to solve this problem.

Search Engine Tools and Services

In Chapter 8 of the SEOmoz Beginners Guide To SEO, you get to learn what tools and services are available to you so that search engines can find you and index your content.

The Guide basically lays out four tools and lists the three Webmaster tools for the three major search engines.

Tool 1 – Sitemaps

SiteMaps are very important in getting indexed because they are the tools search engines need to read what is on your site.

There are different types of sitemaps so you need to load each one on to your site to maximize ways to be found by the major search engines.

For those of you using WordPress, there are plugins for all of these types on site maps and on my YouTube Channel, I have videos explaining how to set up and configure your xml,text,image and video sitemaps.

xml sitemap – This is the first sitemap you should install since it is essential to the search engines for finding you.

rss sitemap – rss feeds – This is a great tool to use when you want to index an interior page or post that has no ranking yet with the search engines.

txt format sitemap – This is a great way of creating a visual sitemap for visitors to your site to use. Google and company like these because they enhance the user experience.

Tool 2 Robot.txt

Robots.txt files – This is a way of telling the search engines that you do not want a certain page or post on your website crawled and indexed.

disallow indexing – You can choose which part of your website, which specific page or post that you do not want indexed. This comes in handy if you have duplicate content on several pages.

location of sitemaps – The robot.txt also tells the search engines where to find sitemaps that will help them index a site.

speed of crawling – Robot.txt can be configured to tell the search engine what speed to use when crawling a site.

Tool 3 Meta Robots

Meta Robots

Page specific robots.txt info- Meta robots are used to tell search engines which specific page, post or information that you don’t want crawled.

Tool 4 NoFollow

nofollow attribute – Another you can do is tell the search engines if you do not want to pass on any of your link authority to people who link to you. You do this by putting a piece of code, relnofollow, onto your page. Again in WordPress there are plugins that make this very easy to implement.

Webmaster Tools

There are sites at all the major search engines available to you for the purpose of getting data about what is indexed on your site and what people are typing in to find you. You will have to follow the set up process specific to each search engine Webmaster site, but once you have done that, these tools can be very helpful at making sure your site is properly optimized. These site are listed below:

This video below will show how to set up an XML sitemap. It also shows how to set up an Image sitemap and a Video sitemap as well. These last two are suggested in a section of the
Guide that covers image optimization, but I combined them in this video because the set up process is the same when using the add new WordPress plugin function.

How to Setup The Sitemaps in WordPress

To set up the sitemaps you click the Plugin Tab in the WordPress dashboard sidebar and then click add new button. Type in the sitemap you are looking for and then find it in the list of choices that appears on your screen.

The three that I recommend are:

Google XML Sitemaps

Google XML Sitemap for Images

Google XML Sitemap for Videos

Once you have installed and activated them, you want to go to the settings page for each plugin and click the Generate a Sitemap button.

Every time you generate a sitemap you will copy the extension that results in the url in the address bar of your browser into a notepad. You’ll need those extensions when you register the sitemaps in the Google Webmaster tools.

Google Webmaster Tools

The next step is to go the Google Webmaster Tools and add the sitemaps to your account so that you can get the analytics for your sitemaps.

Log in to your Webmaster Tools account and go to your main dashboard. Select the website from the website list that you are doing the sitemaps for.

In the dashboard for that website, select the sitemap button in the lower right corner of the dashboard screen. This will take you to the Sitemap dashboard.

At the top of the dashboard select Add Sitemap. A data box appears with the site url and an entry waiting for the extension for the sitemap. This is when you go to your notepad and select the extension you need and copy and paste it in to the data box.

You repeat this process for each sitemap, image and video.

Once you have done the data entry you will see the results in the dashboard for each sitemap.

You are done. Give it some time and soon you will be able to come back to the Google Webmaster tool and see the analytics for each sitemap.

The video below will show you step by step what I just laid out so you should be able to get yourself up and running in short order.

That”s it. I hope this has been helpful. Stay with it, stay well and may your travels be prosperous.

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